<– 005.005 | Index | 006.001 –>
All of the following is completely optional to read. This is no narrative. It in no way affects the story. I’m mostly going to ramble for a few words.
Hello, thanks for reading.
Book six will continue as scheduled. No intermissions or interludes. Tune in next time for 006.001.
I hope you enjoyed our brief interlude to Lansing. I definitely enjoyed writing it. It was fun to take a break from the events surrounding Brakket and Hell. Wayne is actually one of my favorite characters despite his relative lack of prominence compared to the other main characters.
You may have noticed that there is still a mystery surrounding Lansing. Wayne got in and he got out, and we now know what happened to reveal magic to most of the world (even if it hasn’t had much impact on the main story just yet), but we don’t know how events started or why. And really, I hadn’t intended to focus on either of those two questions.
This entire arc was originally going to be an Extra chapter. Wayne laying in his hospital bed after the Book 3 events at Zoe’s home, he reminisced about meeting Zoe while a certain vampire stopped by to visit. While it could have been squeezed down to a single full-sized chapter (similar to Nel’s Extra chapter), it read like a history book. Everything was so condensed and compressed that it wasn’t fun to read.
Besides, that version had no real personality to Serena or Sarah.
So, while writing this, I thought that perhaps it would be a good idea to do a Wayne part two at the end of book six. The Lansing portion wrapped up nicely, but there is still more.
However, I no longer think that’s a good idea. Latest chapter views took a moderate sized dip over the last few chapters. So I probably won’t do that anytime in the near future.
I’ll look for other solutions, but for now, we’ll be going back to Eva and Brakket Academy. I hope you enjoy book six!
Now for some side notes:
So, not much to say in terms of side announcements, but then, this was a short book and the last Author’s Notes was a mere two weeksish ago.
First, another thank you to everyone who has donated through either Patreon or PayPal. It actually hasn’t been long enough for Patreon to tick over, but I appreciate it all the same.
I’d like again to point out that a good amount of referrals to this story come from Top Web Fiction. As such, I would appreciate any extra votes in my direction. It is a quick click once a week and helps a lot.
And, like I said in the previous notes, if you like another story more than mine, go vote for them. If their referrer list is anything similar to mine, they’ll appreciate it.
Anyway, enough babbling. On to the trivia section!
– Serena is the second character able to manipulate perception in some manner or other, the first being the jezebeth that attacked Zoe. The jezebeth was a more complete illusion, but Serena counts. Zagan is a powerful guy who could kill you with an absent thought, but to me, these two are scarier. Are you thinking what you think or what they want you to think? When Wayne was beating down those vampires in 005.002, was that actually Serena on the ground? Or was she standing off to the side, watching how he reacted and maybe ready to attack? You just never know.
I don’t know if that is really trivia given it is a sort of personal thing, but this was a short book, not much to talk about.
-More reading recommendation:
Skulduggery Pleasant (tvtropes link). A young girl meets a skeleton! He’s actually a detective. Time for some adventures! Perhaps for younger audiences, but that doesn’t mean it is bad.
It’s a book series that has actually been published, meaning you’ll have to buy it rather than read it free online. Sorry about that. I’ve actually only read the first book, but it was pretty good. The rest will have to go on my ever-increasing reading backlog.
Stats:
Chapters: 5 (+zero Extras)
Wordcount: 23,424 (according to WordPress’ built in word counter (including Extras))
POV counts (max of one count per chapter (including Extras)):
Wayne: 5
That’s all, thanks for reading book five. I hope you enjoy book six.
“I no longer thing that’s a good idea”
-> think
____
“So I probably won’t do that anytime in the near future.”
Why?
It was good :'(
I still wonder why some people skip entire arcs just because they don’t like them.
If it reveals important plot points, how would they even understand what comes afterward?
If Eva meets Sarah and Serena in the future, all fo those who skipped this book will just wonder who the effe those two are and why do Wayne and Zoe know some vampires?
And why does a vampire seem to like Wayne?
I really can’t understand.
Leechers, like me :p , should leech everything, without complain.
____
“with a absent thought”
-> an absent
And I completly agree with you. Perception manipualtors are really scary.
If Zagan beats you and you survive (mostly because he got too bored of killing you in the middle of it), you just think that he is OP and that you couldn’t do anything.
However, if you survive a fight agaisnt a perception manipulator, did you actually escape?
Or will you soon realise that your whole escape is just another illusion?
You just have to see Zoe’s PTSD to see how scary it is…
Actually, I’m interested in Zoe meeting Serena again, just to see how she would react to the perception manipulator.
___
“That’s all, thanks for reading book four”
-> book five
___
Thanks for the note.
Thanks for the typos!
And yeah, sorry about that. Like I said, I’ll be considering other solutions for side-story type things.
I actually found the arc rather refreshing.
You nailed it.
And especially by contrast with the previous book.
I’m honestly surprised the view count went down. Could anybody tell me why?
Skulduggery Pleasant is a great series. When I first started reading this serial the magic actually reminded me of those books, mostly due to the seeming separation of elemental and adept/other magic. The last book or two were a let down, but I’d second your recommendation.
I didn’t really read this book. I did skim through most of them just to get the gist of what’s going on though. Personally I strongly dislike flashbacks in general, and while I do enjoy Wayne a lot as a supporting character, I just don’t have much interest in his past. As for the ‘finding out what happened at Lansig’ part of the book, basically it’s not my kinda thing – how regular humans found out about magic hasn’t been the focus of the story so far, nor has it really been a big plot-point for any of the main cast’s backstories I feel. I’m really not big on those kinds of stories in the first place and probably wouldn’t have read Void Domain if it WAS the focus.
Besides that, I was already itching to get back to focusing on Eva by the end of book 4, so I wasn’t really feeling up for reading more non-Eva POVs at any rate. I also wasn’t a big fan of the direction chapter 4 took in general, especially Prax was quite annoying to read about and the fact that he’s sticking around indefinitely, even if he’ll be ‘off-screen’ as it were as long as Shalise has control, put a damper on my excitement for the story if I’m honest. The creepy stuff with Zagan was also off-putting in a different way. So a short flash-back story I didn’t have that much interest in anyway was a nice chance to go read other stuff and take a break for me personally.
Finally, I feel the chapter views aren’t necessarily 100% accurate since I often catch myself reading a chapter from the front page since they’re posted in their entirety there. I definitely skimmed a couple of book 5’s chapters that way. Probably couldn’t make up all the viewer numbers, but still.
Thanks for that. I do like feedback along those lines. This is my first major work and I’m sure I’ll still be making tons of mistakes. Feedback helps me improve.
I’ll say that at least part of the reason for book five was my own feelings towards book four. It offered a much needed break while I reorganized my thoughts towards the main story and book six in particular.
You’ll be happy to know that book six is scheduled out to be predominantly Eva POVs.
As for page views, I do realize that they’re not completely accurate. But they are a trend and a good metric. A sudden drop in chapter views probably has an equivalent drop in other places.
Anyway, thanks again, I appreciate it!
I’m certainly looking forward to seeing where the story goes in book 6!
As for feedback, well I’m not sure how much my post really could have helped – in the end most of it really came down to preference, in content and genre and characters. I suppose to some extent what things people like and what they don’t can be helpful, but I feel scattered comments like mine aren’t particularly representative of your readership at large. The one thing in my post I could see be a common thread would be people reading for Eva’s story and having less interest in several chapters in a row dedicated to someone else, but I feel that was fairly predictable at any rate. But I’m sure plenty of your readers enjoy contact stories, or were more curious about Lansing, or what have you.
Thanks for the explanation, that makes a lot more sense than anything I could think of.
I liked the lansing interlude, very cool. Thanks for writing it. 🙂
I am not sure precisely why, but I did notice a drop in my desire to read when I reached this arc. It may be that we’ve taken too long a break from Eva, as pointed out above.
It may also be that we know Wayne and Zoe turn out alright – even more so, alright enough that the nuns didn’t blink at them while in town. Though they did miss Sawyer due to overfocusing on Eva…
This arc made me reflect on Wayne’s reaction to Sister Cross attacking Eva earlier, as well as Zoe’s relatively quick acceptance of demonology. Their undead relations might have something to do with that.
I liked the tidbit on the origin of the dagger. It sounds mostly inconsequential, but it gives a little seasoning to the world.
In retrospect, it was probably a poor decision to place Wayne’s interlude just after book four, which had a noticeable lukewarm reception towards the end (at best). Perhaps I should have spread it out a bit more, one chapter every few chapters of what is currently book six, or something similar. It’s all a learning process for me as I haven’t done anything like this before.
The original plan was to have a certain vampire visit Wayne while he was in the hospital after the demons attacked Zoe’s house waaaay back in book three. They reminisced about the events of what became book five. It was just supposed to be a short Extra-type chapter, but I ended up scrapping about two chapters worth of writing because I couldn’t get it right.
And yeah, I find flashbacks about current characters to be somewhat less interesting as you know how it ends, at least generally. I like to know the history about characters I like, so they’re mostly alright in my mind. Flashbacks about characters you don’t know are the absolute worst though. Some new character that you’re supposed to care what happened to x years ago? Meh. (I’m looking at you, Way of Kings interlude parts).
That said, I really enjoyed writing book five, so it was kind of sad to see people skipping it. Glad some enjoyed it though.
But yeah, reactions between the professors and the Elysium Order are kind of odd. They never actually encountered each other during the events at Lansing (though Wayne and Serena may have bumped into them sometime between current events and this arc).
I wonder how well I’ve communicated this, but the Elysium Order isn’t a small organization. It is mentioned in story that they have operations all over the world (Sister Cross got relegated to an African lich after the Brakket incident for instance). So, on one hand, despite appearing mostly as antagonists to our protagonists, they do do good work by hunting down monsters like Sawyer. On the other hand, Serena and Sarah. So somewhat conflicted feelings there.
Edit: Oh yeah! And thanks for reading!